I soften my voice and say the first thing I’ve said all morning — if it’s still morning. There’s no way to know. My throat is parched when I try to speak, and I realize I’m becoming dehydrated.
“Do you know what I did? After you turned me away that afternoon, five years ago?”
Polina tilts her head. “You cried in your car. Because you’re–”
“No.” I let out a laugh, which descends into a painful coughing fit. Oh, I’m definitely dehydrated. My voice comes out as I dry rasp, but I keep speaking. “I drove back to Missouri. I went to my family. And you know what? They were so awful that it made you pale in comparison, Polina. You have nothing on an alcoholic father and a mother who’s so dead inside she couldn’t care enough to stop him hurting us too. I hoped someone else would protect me. But they wouldn’t. They couldn’t.”
I’m revealing more than I should, but I’ve been awake for hours without food or water, I don’t know where my daughter is, and I’m desperate to prove Polina wrong.
Something sparks in her cold eyes. “What a perfect pairing. The boy whose mother never loved him and the girl whose father abused her.”
She starts to shake with silent laughter, looking like I’ve just handed her a present.
“What makes you think you deserve a love you’ve never had before? And what makes you think that Artyom can give it to you? It’s absurd. You’re like two people who’ve never made a fire trying to figure it out. It won’t work, sweetheart. He’s not coming here for you.”
The suggestion is poisonous and I can’t stop it from running wild through my mind. I must have been here for hours, and no one has showed up yet…
No.
He’ll be here.
He has to be here.
I can’t think like this. I push my doubts down deep and focus on what I need to know. Why is Polina doing this? She’s lost, Denis is gone. I wasn’t the one who killed him.
Polina circles me again and I dig my fingers into my palm.
We were so close to having everything. I fell asleep in my husband’s arms, and I didn’t want to go anywhere. Polina had to rip us apart again, just when it finally felt like we might be able to make things work.
The tears spring in my eyes but I won’t let them fall. I have to stay strong.
For my family.
I try a different tack.
I start to laugh and I find that I can’t stop.
“Give me my child, you bitch.”
Polina’s mouth purses and I know that I’m winning. She thought I would beg. She thought I would doubt myself.
Instead I know Art didn’t sell me out like this.
“Only someone who never cared for her own child would underestimate me right now. Maybe if you’d ever loved someone, you would know why I know you won’t win.”
“I did love. I loved Denis, my whole life. And your husband–“
“Your son.”
“–killed him like it was nothing. For no benefit. For revenge.”
I shake my head. It’s getting harder to speak, my mouthparched. “Art never does anything if it’s not worth his time. If your husband was as innocent as you say, Art never would’ve killed him.”
I descend into a coughing fit that rattles painfully in my throat.
“You think you know him? You don’t understand a thing about this family. About what it means to be a Petrov.”
“Is this because of him? Denis?”
